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Sunday, July 18, 2010

AG Bell Session: Humor

Julia learned a new joke while we were in Florida. It's a knock knock joke and I've explained it to her. I'm not entirely sure she knows why it's funny.

Knock knock.Who's there?Owls.Owls who?You're right, owls do say hoo!

This has momentarily replaced the knock knock joke punchlines, "orange you glad I didn't say banana" and "lettuce in it's cold outside." If you've spent any time with a kid lately, I'm sure you know those ones.

Since we're already spending hours answering knock knocks and decoding inane Popsicle stick jokes, the concurrent session on humor as an auditory-verbal tool really peaked my interest. I'm not an auditory-verbal therapist and my daughter has never been specifically taught in that type of environment. My perspective is just that of a Mom that wants to help her little girl's emerging sense of comedy.

In the hour long session I discovered a lot of work we can be doing to understand the puns that grace our Popsicle sticks. The presenter suggested breaking riddles into two parts and having the child tell everything they know about each part.

One of her examples was: What kind of parties do lambs like?

The adult and the child can talk about all the different kinds of parties there are: birthday parties, slumber parties, graduation parties. Then everything you know about lambs: they're also called sheep, they go baa, they have wool.

Then you're supposed to help the kid make a guess at the riddle. The answer: A sheep over.

This is a great thinking and listening exercise. It's also more fun that other kinds of "work" that kids are asked to do. I wrote a bunch of silly kid jokes in my notebook.

My next step is to get a book of jokes from the library. Julia has been wanting one. Now I'm somewhat professionally trained to work through it with her. She'll soon be the Last Comic Standing, I'm sure.